Free Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Page A

told her, smiling to take the sting from my words. “I especially liked the theory about Sheila really being Iris and/or Leo’s illegitimate daughter.”
    Barbara frowned for a moment, then grinned as we crossed the street at the light.
    “We’ll do it, Kate!” she shouted over the noise of traffic. She waved her fist in the air jubilantly. “We’ll find the murderer. It’s only a matter of time.”
    The sound of my groan was lost in the street noise.
    Paula’s law office was up a flight of red-carpeted stairs, above a bakery. The black-and-gold lettering on the glass door read “Pierce and Nakhuda Law offices, Specializing in Women’s Law.”
    Barbara opened the door and the two of us walked in. The offices were furnished more luxuriously than one might expect to find over a bakery. Plush cream-colored carpeting, two camel-colored sofas, and rosewood shelves filled with law books gave the room a professional look. The young Hispanic woman behind the rosewood reception desk detracted somewhat from the businesslike image. Not that she wasn’t well dressed. Her open cotton blouse looked fine. It was the baby nursing at her breast that didn’t match the rest of the room.
    “Can I help you?” she asked, smiling politely.
    “Kate Jasper and Barbara Chu,” I said briskly. “Here to see Paula Pierce.”
    She shifted the baby to her other breast, picked up the telephone with her spare hand and murmured a few words, then asked us to take a seat. I sat down on a sofa as ordered. Barbara didn’t.
    “What an absolutely adorable baby,” she cooed, walking closer to the desk.
    From where I sat, the baby didn’t look extraordinarily adorable, just a small lavender bundle with a few dark hairs on its head. I would have bet Barbara was trying to make points before she launched into the questions she really wanted answered.
    “Have you been with Ms. Pierce long?” she asked.
    The young mother shrugged gently, not enough to disturb the baby. Barbara moved quickly to her next question.
    “What exactly is ‘women’s law’?” she asked.
    “Oh, lots of stuff,” the young woman answered. “They do divorce, custody battles, employment discrimination, wrongful termination, child-support collection—stuff like that.” She shrugged her shoulders again.
    “How do you like Ms. Pierce?” Barbara pressed on.
    A genuine smile lit up the young woman’s face. “She’s wonderful!” she said enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t have custody of my baby now if it weren’t for her—”
    A door opened to her side and the wonderful attorney in question walked through. Paula Pierce looked much as she had the night before, stocky in today’s gray business suit, her cropped salt-and-pepper hair as uncompromising as ever. The circles under her eyes might have been a little darker, her mouth a little tighter, but other than that, she looked unaffected by Sheila Snyder’s death. She jerked her hand, motioning us through her door.
    “Please, come in,” she said brusquely.
    As we entered Paula’s office, I looked back over my shoulder at the young woman nursing her baby. I wanted to hear the end of her story.
    “I have twenty minutes,” Paula announced.
    I closed the door regretfully and sat with Barbara on yet another camel-colored sofa. Paula Pierce took a chair behind her rosewood desk and looked at us expectantly. I could hear the sound of traffic through her open window, even smell the paired scents of yeast and sugar drifting up from the bakery below.
    “Well?” Paula prodded impatiently.
    “We wanted to get your thoughts on the murder,” Barbara said, smiling.
    Paula didn’t return the smile. “I don’t have any more knowledge concerning last night’s events than you do yourselves,” she stated categorically.
    “But you might,” I argued, appealing to her sense of fairness. “You don’t really know unless we compare notes.”
    “Perhaps,” she answered, her eyes thoughtful. “But I’ve already told the